Some embodiments described herein relate generally to networks used for multicasting traffic, and, in particular, to methods and apparatus for enabling a quick multicast traffic failover in a network.
Some known networks used for multicasting traffic include switches enabled with a snooping mechanism (e.g., Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP)-snooping, Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD)-snooping) and a network protocol (e.g., the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)) defining a topology for the network. Such a switch typically has a port designated as a multicast-router interface for forwarding multicast traffic to a multicast router (e.g., by IGMP-snooping or MLD-snooping). When the topology changes, the port may not function as a multicast-router interface anymore, thus another port of the switch is designated as a new multicast-router interface. The new multicast-router interface, however, typically is not immediately designated in the snooping mechanism after the change of the topology. As a result, a loss of multicast data can be caused to the receivers that are receiving data through the multicast router from the switch.
Accordingly, a need exists for a solution that can enable improved failover in the topology of the network such that the loss of multicast data can be reduced in case of a change of a multicast-router interface.